Tag: David Hurst

Don’t Throw the Past Away: Rediscovering the “Drucker Space”
by David Hurst

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 7th Global Peter Drucker Forum

For Peter Drucker history was an essential resource. Commentators have described the scope of his writings as “Braudelian” in honor of the work of historian, Fernand Braudel, the leader of the French Annales school of history, renowned for its broad, integrative approach. Drucker’s illustrations of organization and change included both the British Raj in India and the Meiji Restoration in Japan. A trio of little-known German thinkers, Willem von Humboldt (1767-1835), Joseph von Radowitz (1797-1853) and Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861) informed his understanding of what it took to preserve the traditions of the past while facilitating rapid change.   Ever since the reform of the American business schools in the late 1950s, however, the perceived […]

Post-Rational Management? Reflections on the Global Drucker Forum 2014
by David Hurst

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The 6th Global Drucker Forum ended on November 14 with a series of comments and calls to action from the major speakers involved. The last of these was HBS professor Clay Christensen, who called for more cooperation and harmonizing of language among management experts. He illustrated the kind of cooperation he was talking about with a story about Florida governor Jeb Bush and how he had shared slides from a presentation on the topic of child-centred education and the reform of the American education system. Forbes columnist Steve Denning quoted Christensen’s story in full and suggested that this is the way the management field should be headed. I didn’t agree and responded to his column. […]

The Mongrel Discipline of Management
by David Hurst

Posted on guestLeave a commentPosted in 5th Global Peter Drucker Forum

This is a cross-post from the HBR Complexity Serieswritten by David K. Hurst, and is one of the perspectives relating to the 2013 Drucker Forum Theme (“Managing Complexity”).   Humans engage with their world in two reciprocal ways: firstly as passionate participants and secondly as detached observers. As managers we cycle between these modes constantly. It’s the mark of a great manager to be able to judge, in a complex situation, when and how to use each of them.   Detached observation requires a certain maturity. Consider that we are born into the world immersed in context. We are embodied organisms, fine-tuned by evolution to garner cues to action from our surroundings. We pay attention when […]